Fano resonance and EIT like effect based on 4x4 multimode interferance structures

Keywords: Multimode interference couplers, silicon wire, CMOS technology, optical couplers, Fano resonance, EIT INTRODUCTION Devices based on optical microring resonators hare attracte

Fano Resonance and EIT-like effect based on 4x4 Multimode Interference

Structures

1 Duy-Tien Le and 2 *Trung-Thanh Le

1 International School (VNU-IS), Vietnam National University (VNU), Hanoi, Vietnam

2 International School (VNU-IS), Vietnam National University (VNU), Hanoi, Vietnam.

2 ORCID: 0000-0003-0147-688X

Abstract

We propose a new structure for creating the Fano resonance

and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect

The structure is based on 4x4 multimode interference couplers

The proposed devices have advantages of compactness, large

tolerance fabrication The transfer matrix method (TMM) and

numerical methods are used for analytical analysis and design

of the device

Keywords: Multimode interference couplers, silicon wire,

CMOS technology, optical couplers, Fano resonance, EIT

INTRODUCTION

Devices based on optical microring resonators hare attracted

considerable attention recently, both as compact and highly

sensitive sensors and for optical signal processing applications

[1] The resonance line shape of a conventional microring

resonator is symmetrical with respect to its resonant

wavelength However, microring resonator coupled Mach

Zehnder interferometers can produce a very sharp asymmetric

Fano line shape that are used for improving optical switching

and add-drop filtering [2, 3]

The strong sensitivity of Fano resonance to local media brings

about a high figure of merit (FOM), which promises extensive

applications in optical devices such as optical switches [4]

Fano resonances have long been recognized in grating

diffraction and dielectric particles elastic scattering phenomena

The physics of the Fano resonance is explained by an

interference between a continuum and discrete state [5] The

simplest realization is a one dimensional discrete array with a

side coupled defect In such a system scattering waves can

either bypass the defect or interact with it Recently, optical

Fano resonances have also been reported in various optical

micro-cavities including integrated waveguide-coupled

microcavities [6], prism-coupled square micro-pillar resonators,

multimode tapered fiber coupled micro-spheres and Mach

Zehnder interferometer (MZI) coupled micro-cavities [7],

that optical Fano resonances have niche applications in resonance line shape sensitive bio-sensing, optical channel switching and filtering [10]

In addition, electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) has been intensively investigated in recent decades [11, 12] Extensive research efforts have been made in fundamental physics and exciting applications These include quantum information, lasing without inversion, optical delay, slow light

or storing light, nonlinearity enhancement and precise spectroscopy, pushing frontiers in quantum mechanics and photonics [12]

EIT was first observed in atomic media [13] EIT-like effects are identified as a universal phenomenon in coupled resonant systems in optics [14], mechanics and electrical circuits [15], plasmonics, metamaterials and hybrid configurations [16]

In this paper, we propose a new structure based on 4x4 multimode interference couplers to produce Fano resonances and EIT like effect We further develop the EIT structure by cascading the two Fano resonances based on our recent research [17] The design of the devices is to use silicon waveguides that is compatible with CMOS technology The proposed device is analyzed and optimized using the transfer matrix method, the beam propagation method (BPM) and FDTD [18]

STRUCTURE AND OPERATING PRINCIPLES

A schematic of the structure is shown in Fig 1 The proposed structure contains one 4x4 MMI coupler connected to a second 4x4 MMI coupler via four arms, where

i i i i

and output waveguides Two microring resonators are introduced to two upper arms and phase shifters  1, 2 are in the others

Here, it is shown that by introducing two phase shifters to two arms, we can achieve two independent tunable Fano resonance

the two independent Fano resonance line shapes, we achieve

the EIT like effect as shown in Fig.1

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of a microring resonator coupled

4x4 GMZI structure

Let consider a single ring resonator in the first arm of GMZI

structure of Fig.1, the field amplitudes at input and output of

the microring resonator can be expressed by using the transfer

matrix method [19]



     (1)

b '   exp( j )c ' (2) Where 1 and 1 are the amplitude transmission and coupling

coefficients of the coupler, respectively; for a lossless

coupler,   12 12 1 The transmission loss factor 1 is

1 exp( 0 1L )

   , where L1 R1 is the length of the

microring waveguide, R1 is the radius of the microring

resonator and 0(dB / cm) is the transmission loss coefficient

1 0 1L

waveguide, where   0 2 neff /,  is the optical wavelength

and neff is the effective refractive index

Therefore, the transfer response of the single microring

resonator can be given by



The effective phase 1 caused by the microring resonator is

defined as the phase argument of the field transmission factor,

which is

As a result, the phase difference between two arms 1 and 4 of

the GMZI is expressed by

1

1 1 1

1

1 1 1

sin

cos sin

    

    

(5)

By the same analysis, the phase difference between two arms 2 and 3 of the GMZI is expressed by

2 2 2

sin

cos sin

    

      



(6)

The MMI coupler consists of a multimode optical waveguide that can support a number of modes In order to launch and extract light from the multimode region, a number of single mode access waveguides are placed at the input and output planes If there are N input waveguides and M output waveguides, then the device is called an NxM MMI coupler The operation of optical MMI coupler is based on the self-imaging principle [20, 21] Self-self-imaging is a property of a multimode waveguide by which as input field is reproduced in single or multiple images at periodic intervals along the propagation direction of the waveguide The central structure of the MMI filter is formed by a waveguide designed to support a large number of modes

It is assumed that two 4x4 MMI couplers have the same width

MMI

W and length MMI 3L

L

2



 The silicon waveguide is used for the design The parameters used in the designs are as follows: the waveguide has a standard silicon thickness of

co

a

designs are for the TE polarization at a central optical wavelength  1550nm By using the BPM simulation, we showed that the width of the MMI is optimized to be

MMI

W =6µm for compact and high performance device The 3D-BPM simulations for this cascaded 4x4 MMI coupler are shown in Fig 2(a) for the signal at input port 1 and Fig 2(b) for the signal at input port 2 The optimised length of each MMI coupler is found to be LMMI141.7 m

Figure 2: BPM simulations for 4x4 cascaded MMI coupler

used for microring resonator coupled MZI for input 1 and 2

The relations between the complex amplitudes at the input

ports and output ports can be expressed in terms of the transfer

matrices of the 3dB MMI couplers and the phase shifters as

follows



Similarly, the complex amplitudes at input and output ports 2

and 3 can be expressed by



Here, the transmission loss factor  2 exp(0L )2 , where

L  R is the length of the microring waveguide in arm 2,

2

R is the radius of the microring resonator and 0(dB / cm) is

the transmission loss coefficient   2 0L2 is the phase

accumulated over the microring waveguide

As a result, the transmissions at the bar and cross output ports

of the structure in Fig.1 are given by

2

2

It will be shown that the transmissions have the Fano resonance

line shape and the shape can be tuned by tuning the phase

shifters 1 and 2

SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Without loss of generality, we choose the microring radius

1

R  5 mfor compact device but still low loss [22], effective

refractive index calculated to be neff 2.2559,  1 0.707

(3dB coupler) and  1 0.98 We vary the phase shift 1 from

0 to 1.5 The transmission at bar port of the device are

The phase shifter can be made from thermos-optic effect or free carrier effect in silicon waveguide [23] These Fano resonance occur from interference between the optical resonance in the arm coupled with microring resonator and the propagating mode in the other arm From the simulation results, we can see that the continuous transition from an asymmetric to symmetric and toward a reverse line shape can be achieved by changing the phase shifter in the straight waveguide 1 Therefore, we can control a Fano resonance by adjusting the phase shift In addition, by choosing the phase shift appropriately, a sharp Fano line shape can be obtained This means that the transmitted power at the output port is very sensitive to the resonance wavelength and thus optical sensors based on this property can provide a high sensitivity

Fig 4 shows the transmission spectra of the device at the bar port for different coupling ratio of the microring resonator with the MZI arm It can be seen that a very sharp Fano line can be achieved if the coupling coefficient of the coupler 1 is small The coupling coefficient of the coupler can be tuned by adjusting the length of the directional coupler or by using the MMI coupler [24] Fig.5 shows the controlling of the coupling and transmission coefficients by changing the gap and the length of the directional coupler

Figure 3: Transmission spectra via the device at the bar port

for  1 0,  1 0.5 ,   1 1.5 

Figure 4: Transmission spectra via the device at the bar port

Figure 5: Power transfer between the straight and ring

waveguides dependence gap and waveguide width, R=5µm

Now we investigate the behavior of the device when cascading

the two 4x4 MMI coupler The EIT effect can be created as

shown in Fig.6

Figure 6: EIT effect created from the structure

In our FDTD simulation, we take into account the wavelength

dispersion of the silicon waveguide We employ the design of

the directional coupler presented in the previous section as the

input for the FDTD A Gaussian light pulse of 15fs pulse width

is launched from the input to investigate the transmission

characteristics of the device The grid size    x y 0.02nm

simulations have a good agreement with the analytic analysis

Figure 7: FDTD simulations of the device

CONCLUSION

This paper has presented a new structure for achieving tunable Fano resonance line shapes and EIT like effect The proposed structure is based on 4x4 multimode interference couplers By cascading the two independent Fano resonances, the EIT effect

is achieved This design of the proposed device is based on silicon waveguide The whole device structure can be fabricated on the same chip using CMOS technology The transfer matrix method (TMM) and beam propagation method (BPM) are used for analytical analysis and design of the device Then the FDTD method is used to compare with the analytic method The proposed structure is useful for potential applications such as highly sensitive sensors and low power all-optical switching

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number “103.02-2013.72" and Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) under project number QG.15.30

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